


easy in the evening

by Jocondite (jocondite)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-14
Updated: 2009-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:31:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jocondite/pseuds/Jocondite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon can remember the last time they shared a girl. He went first and Shane sat on Brendon's bedroom chair in his boxers, jerking off slowly with one hand and smoking up, and the whole room stunk of weed, practically hot-boxed. Brendon's eyes started stinging a little with smoke and sweat, and he finished fast and rolled over onto his back. Then Shane had come over to the bed for his turn and passed him the blunt, and Brendon lay there watching the ceiling and smoking, feeling the mattress rocking beside him.</p><p>The next time they take a girl home together, it's completely different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	easy in the evening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disarm_d](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/gifts).



> Set in 2007/2008, when Brendon and Shane were roommates.

Brendon's pretty sure at first the club's going to suck. Shane has a good eye for finding awesome places before they blow up too big, but even though they get there at nine, the place is quiet and half-empty, too much of the scarred and notched-up wooden floor visible under the dim lighting. He can see the potential - there's a long bar counter down the length of the long room, and the walls are decorated with posters for local bands he's never heard of, and along the other side of the room are open doors out onto a broad balcony overlooking the city - but there's still nothing going on. There's a raised stage up one end of the room that's probably used for live sets, with a ridiculous red velvet curtain, but tonight they have turntables up there. The DJ's still setting up, and most of the people there are vaguely professional twenty and thirtysomethings.

"This place is dead," he says, a little too loudly, bumping Shane's shoulder with his own. "I see no chance of getting laid here. Nada."

"Give it half an hour," Shane hisses back. "If it's still dead after the set starts, we'll ditch it, go to the Palms."

"They're drinking wine," Brendon accuses. " _Wine._ "

"You like wine."

"Mixed with Sprite, yeah."

He orders JD on ice anyway, and leans back against the bar, taking aggrieved sips and pointedly checking his watch. He can feel Shane shake silently with laughter against his side, but all Shane says is "Asshole."

Shane's right, though, much as Brendon would prefer not to admit that, since it carries the corollary of 'Brendon is wrong'. They've barely been there ten minutes before it becomes obvious that the place is filling up rapidly, more people arriving every few minutes; people much more Brendon's speed, hipsters and people around his own age, some markedly pretty girls. It's not that Brendon doesn't think that he could work his charms on some of the professional-looking lady lawyer types, it's just that, well. He's not really up to trying it, that's all. He stands a little straighter at the bar when more girls come in, and Shane snickers again. Brendon kicks him subtly in the shin.

"You're such a five year old," Shane says, and kicks him back.

"I begin to see why you wanted to come here," Brendon says graciously, ignoring the slur on his developmental level. "This place is looking better and better."

"It is," Shane agrees, and points out two girls dancing up by the stage with a nudge of his shoulder and a tilt of his glass.

"The scenery is definitely interesting," Brendon nods. "Lots of potential." The girls are cute; Shane has a good eye for a hot girl, as well as a new nightspot. One of them's wearing a really, really tight red dress that wraps round her body like saran wrap, and that's definitely interesting. The other girl's pretty hot, too, though, little skirt and bandeau top, and Brendon's about to ask Shane which one he's going to go for when he thinks, wait. Screw having to choose.

"Hey, dude," he says, and Shane tears his eyes away from the girls and grins at him. Brendon's often thought that Shane's eyes are made for smiling, green and hazel and somehow really and palpably warm. It's pretty hard for Brendon not to smile back, so he doesn't try to fight it, beams back brightly.

"Yeah?"

"Hold my drink, okay?" Brendon asks, and doesn't wait for an answer before shoving his glass into Shane's hand and pushing away from the bar, disappearing into the crowd.

The girl in the red dress kind of reminds him of Jackie O, maybe, wide dark eyes and little rosebud mouth. Her friend has dark hair feathered into a pixie cut and bare brown shoulders; they're both good dancers, moving along to the music, a slow-frantic sort of techno. They move aside when he joins them, eyebrows raising, but he grins at them both and then they're all dancing.

The mix is pretty good, but the speakers are too close and too loud and he can feel the thrum of the beat reverberating in his chest and along the line of his throat, pulsing in the notch of his collarbone like a second heartbeat. There's a handmade sign above one of the tall speakers, please don't climb the speakers unless you're willing to spend two hours pulling them back into place, with a brightly menacing smiley face at the end of the sentence. There's sweat gleaming in the dip of the bare-shouldered girl's collarbone, and the Jackie girl's hair swings out behind her in a dark wave. Brendon puts his hand on the bare-shouldered girl's bare waist and feels her skin hot and naked against his palms; she tilts her chin up and he laughs, leans down and kisses her. She tastes sweet, too sweet. When he pulls away there's strawberry-tasting lipgloss smeared all over his mouth, and he wipes at it vainly with the back of his hand.

The Jackie girl laughs at him, tugging on his arm until he kisses her, too. There's something in her mouth, and she slips it to him on her tongue and then laughs when he grinds up close, waggling his eyebrows and mouthing "What is it?"

Brendon picks her up and swings her around a little until she shouts something in his ear.

"What?"

She shouts again and Brendon squints; it looks like she's saying 'E', and he's okay with that. He mouths it back to her and nods at her a couple of times, laughing when she nods frenetically back, and makes a big show of swallowing.

He's having a pretty good time, all things considered, so he cranes his head to look around for Shane, to see if he's watching, see what he's doing; it takes him a second to place him in the crowd. Shane's still leaning back against the bar, talking to a pretty girl with insouciantly flippy blonde hair, bending his head down to talk to her. It's kind of obvious to Brendon that he's flirting, because he's doing that thing where he rubs the back of his neck and laughs and his eyes get all warm and squinty. She's cute, and Brendon shifts to get a better look at her, see what Shane's looking at; there's a tug on his arm and the other girl's trying to get his attention again.

"Drink?" he suggests, mouths, and tilts his head over to the bar to make sure she gets it. She nods and disappears, and he puts his hand on Jackie-girl's hips and pulls her closer into the empty space. The red dress is slick under his hands, and he leans in and nuzzles at her neck. "Want to get out of here?"

-

The red dress turns out to be as tight as it looks, but there's still enough room for Brendon to get his hand up under it, work the hem up her thighs and hook his fingers inside her panties. He's smooth about it, though; he knows better than to just shove the bathroom door shut and start unzipping his jeans, although maybe there was a time when he didn't once.

The bathroom's small and kind of grungy, two stalls and a mirror over the sink. There are posters and flyers all over the walls, in varying states of decrepitude, messages scrawled in sharpie onto the paint and across the stall doors and over the flyers announcing long-ago upcoming gigs and album releases and dance parties. Brendon finds it kind of familiar, even kind of soothing, although that could be the E. He takes his time and makes out with the girl first; her mouth is hot under his, and her lips aren't coated in that shitty strawberry stuff. It only takes a minute or two of making out until she stops worrying over how dirty it might be and lets him push her back against the bathroom wall, and not long after that he makes his move and slides his hand up up up her thigh and under her dress.

Her underwear doesn't amount to much, a little bit of fabric he can push aside, and then he can feel her, slick and so fucking warm; warmer around his fingers than the inside of her mouth is, warmer than her smooth bare arm against the palm of his free hand. He can feel his pulse in his ears still, beating against his breastbone, the music outside reverberating against his lower arm where it's propped against the wall.

The girl pants against his mouth and he squeezes her arm tighter and pushes his two fingers further inside her, thumb fumbling for her clit. When he finds it, she makes a dark, throaty little noise and pushes her breasts against his chest in a way Brendon finds kind of awesome, although he'd like it even better if he could spare an extra pair of hands to appreciate them properly. Sometimes he could really do with having six arms, like a Hindu god, although when he thinks that normally he's thinking about being able to play guitar and the tambourine and work a mic and maybe play something else at the same time.

He spends a couple of minutes kind of busy, the girl pressed up against him and her leg wrapped around his hip, his hand up her skirt and her little breathy noises against his ear; he's just thinking that he's probably going to stop touching her soon and see if she's willing to let him fuck her in the bathroom yet when there's a faint click of the doorhandle and a sudden increase in the volume of the music, and he pauses.

"Mmh?" the girl moans, both kind of a question and a _go back to what you were doing at once_ , and Brendon decides that it's no way in his best interests for the evening, or at least for the next fifteen minutes, to draw attention to the open door. The girl hasn't noticed, so Brendon doesn't really give a fuck. He figures that whoever it is will turn around and walk out in a second. It's not like they're naked or even a little naked, so it's not worth watching; he's covering most of her, especially from the doorway, set into the wall on their left. He bends his head and sucks at the side of her neck instead, tongue working at smooth damp skin, feels her tighten around his fingers in response, and waits for the door to close again.

There's no second click, though, and that's kind of annoying. The longer the door stays open, the more likely she is to notice, and Brendon can't see if she's ready to fuck him until whoever the fuck it is gets the hell out. The tendons in his wrist are starting to bug him. He turns his head as surreptitiously as he can and flicks his eyes sideways to the mirror, reflecting the doorway directly opposite.

Shane's standing there, watching, and some part of Brendon isn't really all that surprised. He can't read the expression on Shane's face at all, though, and that's pretty uncommon. It's almost the look he gets when he's filming someone else and doesn't know Brendon's watching him, and at the same time it's not anywhere near close to that.

Brendon drops his eyes before Shane can notice him watching, and takes his steadying hand off the wall. "God, you feel good," he breathes into the girl's ear, spreading his hand over her breast, rubbing with his thumb for her nipple through her dress. The fabric's thick enough that it's only a faint echo, but he can feel it, the change in texture and softness. It suddenly seems important to get her off as soon as he can. Shane's still standing there inside the door when Brendon darts a look in the mirror again, door three-quarters closed behind his back.

She moans back, not quite a proper word, and Brendon leans in and kisses her properly, wet and thorough. He can feel her hips working impatiently against his hand, urgent, and when she arches against him he bends his head and kisses the edge of her jaw. When he glances at the mirror next, Shane's gone.

"Well, that was pretty good," the girl announces a moment later, pulling away, in a bright voice completely different to the low sounds she'd been making just before. Brendon leans an elbow against the wall and watches her tug at her skirt, then turn and fix her hair in the mirror, check for smudges in her eyeliner - like a minute or two ago he didn't have her backed up against the wall, writhing down onto his fingers. Watching her reapply her lipgloss, somehow he's pretty sure that the window for opportunistic sex has passed. He could be really fucking annoyed with Shane for fouling his game if he wanted to be.

"Do you want me to give you a hand?”

A hand wasn't really what Brendon had in mind. He can do better. "No," he says morosely. He thinks about suggesting more.

The door closes behind her with a neat snick and Brendon pushes away from the wall. The water from the faucet is shockingly cold on his skin, and he washes his hands thoroughly and methodically, like his mother taught him, and then slicks his hair behind his ears with the left over moisture instead of grabbing a paper towel.

-

He doesn't really feel like heading out onto the floor again after that. When he comes out of the bathroom, still hard and frustrated as fuck, he can see Jackie-girl talking to the other girl, and he's pretty sure that way lies trouble, since tje bandeau girl narrows her eyes and glares at him across the room. Jackie-girl blows him a kiss, then turns away.

Brendon ignores them and appraises the crowd, weighing up the pros and cons of trying to hook up again here, going to another club and trying to hook up with someone there, or even just going home and beating off. He's not really overfond of the last option, but the first two sound like work, and he's tired. He's already blown his chances with the two hottest girls here, or had them blown for him, and not in the way that ends up with his dick in someone's mouth. The more he thinks about that, the more ill-used he feels.

He's planning on heading over to the bar for another drink - his first couple of drinks feels like fucking forever ago - when he stops, opposite the sets of open doors that lead out onto the balcony. It's hard to tell from the back, but he's pretty sure that one of the girls standing out there is the blonde girl Shane was talking to earlier, staring out over the city. She's smoking, and she's alone.

Brendon switches direction.

"Hey," he says, resting his forearms on the balcony's edge beside her. "I'm Brendon." He can actually hear himself talk out here, over the music, and that's a surprisingly nice change. Not that he can't get all the essentials across with body language, not that he's not good at that, but there's no denying that being able to talk helps.

The girl slants a look at him sideways. "April." She barely comes up to his shoulder, but he's willing to bet that she's closer to Shane's age than his. Her skin shines with faint glitter, a sheen starting along her collarbone and disappearing down into the neckline of her little black top.

"Oh," Brendon says. "Uh. Hi."

"Hi," she repeats, mouth twitching a little. Brendon is pretty sure she's laughing at him, and he's thinking about walking away when she adds "Come here often?"

"I think that's supposed to be my line," he says, and then, "No, yeah, all the time. Totally a regular."

"Yeah?"

"No," he admits. "That's all lies. Never been here before tonight." She grins at that, dark eyes warm and appreciative, and Brendon decides to take a risk. "And until I met you out here," he adds in a low, sultry voice, "I was about to write the whole place off."

She's taking a drag when he says that, and chokes abruptly on the exhale, spluttering smoke into the evening air. "Fuck," she says, coughing a little, "that's terrible."

"True," Brendon agrees easily, and stands there not sure of what else to say while she laughs, still wheezing.

"April," someone says from behind them. "It was rum and coke, right? You sound like you could use it."

With a sweeping sense of inevitability, Brendon turns around. Shane's standing there with a glass in each hand, and the look he gives Brendon is both annoyed and amused and sort of tolerant, a familiar look Brendon has no trouble reading.

"Shane!" The girl smiles dazzling bright, her teeth white and even. "Thank you for getting that for me." She takes the glass from Shane and beams up at him, little chin lifted high.

"Yeah," Brendon says, leaning back against the balcony as carelessly as he can and eyeing up the glass in Shane's other hand. "Thank you for getting that for me, Shane."

"Man, you wish," Shane says, and drains a few inches off the beer possessively.

"I do," Brendon says plaintively. "I do wish. Sharing is caring, dude."

"Yeah, but I just don't know if I care enough to share my alcohol with you." Shane looks meditative. "There are lines. And they start with beer."

Brendon makes his best sad, suffering child face, with a touch of kicked puppydog thrown in; Shane sighs and shoves the glass at him.

The girl's raising her eyebrows, eyes going from Brendon to Shane and back again.

"I have to live with him," Shane explains. "There's only so much complaining I can take."

"So, April," Brendon says, ignoring Shane as totally as he can, "what do you do?" He's found that girls like to talk about themselves. April's not much different, though she gives him a measuring sort of look over her glass first; she works in graphic design ("Oh," Brendon murmurs, "that sounds interesting," and Shane nods), she lives in Vegas but she hasn't lived there long, she's in her late twenties but won't give her age. Then she turns the question back on him, with a glance that includes Shane, too.

"Film," Sane says, almost at the same time that Brendon says "Music, which is way better," and laughs helplessly. "I get to travel a lot."

"Douche, I travel, too," Shane sighs, and punches Brendon's shoulder lightly. "We work together a lot," he explains for her sake.

"That must be nice," she says. "That's how you met?"

"Yeah," Brendon supplies, before Shane can.

It goes on like that for a while, Brendon doing his best to be charming and Shane making subtle 'go away now' hints which Brendon pretends to be wholly oblivious to. They finish each other's sentences and elbow each other and talk at her, and then get caught up in their own arguments. Brendon's enjoying himself, bright and loose and a little manic, like E always makes him, and she seems to find them funny, which is the important point. He's wondering if he can send Shane to the bar again and sneak off with her under his nose, knock Shane over the balcony, something, when the girl tilts her head back to get the last of her drink, then sets the empty glass decisively on the edge of the balcony.

"Okay," she says, shaking back her hair; it bounces a little, bright as butter under the overhead lights. Her eyes, wide and dark, move from Shane to Brendon and back again. "You two are really cute together, and I'm sold. Shall we get out of here?"

Brendon blinks, and his gaze jerks to Shane, unbidden. Shane looks as _wait, what?_ as Brendon feels but he hides it pretty well; you'd probably have to know him as well as Brendon does to see it, a slight widening of his eyes. Finally Shane shrugs, loose-shouldered, and tilts his head. "Brendon?"

The beat is thumping and she has glitter smeared along her collarbone and disappearing into shadow, and Brendon is kind of wasted, so he puts his hand on her hip and says "Yeah, totally, let's get out of here."

-

They make out a little in the taxi on the way there; Shane and April, April and Brendon. It's probably not the best idea but Brendon's buzzing and he doesn't want to wait. He doesn't want to wait when they get home, either, so he's kind of pissed - really kind of pissed - when he can't find his keys, and Shane has trouble finding his own.

"Shit," he says, "I had them - I had them in the taxi, fuck," and Shane laughs.

"Did you try your pockets, dude? That's where they were last week, just where you left them."

Brendon pats haphazardly at himself, and Shane laughs again, deep and low.

"You're literally too drunk to find your ass with both hands again, aren't you? Come here, idiot." He reaches out and grabs the hem of Brendon's shirt and tugs him in closer. "I'm sure you've got them, let me check." His hands skim quickly over Brendon's hips, checking the front, then sliding around to try his back pockets.

"It's a fine ass," the girl says appreciatively, and Shane pauses with his hands on said ass, hazel eyes more dark than green in the feeble light outside their door.

"Uh, yeah," he says, smile stuttering, and hooks Brendon's keys from his back pocket. "Got them."

Brendon kind of thinks that it should be okay to shut the door and unzip your jeans if it's your own house. The mia casa dispensation, maybe. No need for further small talk. Normally, he'd try and speed things up by skipping straight to the making out, but Shane's presence precludes that option.

"Nice place. How long have you guys lived here?"

"A while," Shane says, at the same time Brendon says "God, I don't even know any more." They look at each other and laugh.

Shane rubs the back off his neck and squints thoughtfully. "A year?"

"No," Brendon says, thinking, "we moved in when we got back from the cabin, so -"

"Close enough."

The girl smiles, glancing around the living room and shifting her purse from one hand to the other. "It's nice."

Brendon listens with mild incredulity as they actually start to discuss location and property values. He knew that Shane's game was not exactly the same as his, but this is just _bad_. He smirks for a little while, until he notices that she's nodding just as interestedly as Shane, touching his arm with her fingers, talking about things Brendon knows and cares very little about. He folds his arms and leans against the wall, feeling left out, like a little kid eavesdropping on adults.

After a few minutes he straightens up, and walks across into the open-plan kitchen, straight for the fridge. He rummages around for the half-bottle of champagne he knows is in there somewhere, and when he finds it he pulls out the loose cork and tips it back. It's dry and tart, and after a few long swallows he becomes aware that the fridge is beeping frantically at him, _close me, close me,_ and that Shane's stopped talking and is looking over at him, eyebrows pinched together a little dubiously.

"Brendon, man," he says. "April's going to think you have no manners at all."

"Hey, I'm willing to share," Brendon protests, closing the fridge and wandering back over. "My manners are awesome."

Shane says "Uh-huh, uh-huh," but he swipes the bottle off Brendon and finishes it off, the flex of his throat caught by the bright light overhead.

When Brendon looks away, the girl is watching him, her mouth curving. "Maybe you guys could show me the bedroom next."

"We, uh, we have our own rooms," Shane says, fumbling, looking at Brendon for help. "For space, you know. Your room or mine?"

It's been a while since they hooked up with the same girl - almost a year, easy - and Brendon doesn't know what the right answer is to that any more.

"Yours," he says finally, and Shane nods.

-

Shane's bedroom isn't quite as big as his, but it's big enough, and it's neater, at least today. The bed is even made, and Brendon raises his eyebrows when he sits down on the edge of it, carefully.

"Yeah, yeah, I cleaned," Shane says, "you want to make something of it?"

"I just think April should know that this is a special and unusual effort," Brendon says. She laughs.

"He doesn't clean up for you?"

"He doesn't appreciate me anymore," Brendon confides sadly; it works like a charm, because she shoots a reproachful look at Shane and comes over to him. She's short enough that even though he's sitting down, he doesn't really have to lean up too far to kiss her. He slides his hands around her waist, up under her shirt, her ribcage ridged against his palms. He can taste the sweetness of the rum and coke on her breath.

Over her shoulder, Shane makes a face at him. Brendon's too much otherwise occupied to make one back, but he moans deep and low to annoy Shane, leaning backwards onto the bed and pulling her forward with him. Her shirt slips further fractions higher, baring more of her pale back.

"Oh, are we getting naked?" Shane asks, slightly too loud. .

Brendon's still glaring at Shane when Shane pulls his shirt abruptly off, and he finds himself staring at Shane's bare chest. It's familiar; they live together, and Brendon's seen him shirtless a thousand times. It's not like he's never seen the solid rounded breadth of Shane's shoulders before, the freckle below his collarbone, the flat nipples and the dark traces of hair: under his arms, disappearing into his jeans, and barely discernable on his chest. These things are all known to him.

It's different like this, though. Sitting on Shane's bed, watching him take his clothes off, half-aroused from making out with the girl. The context is everything, and this context makes things weird; Brendon's glare falters, half-formed.

"Are we?" she asks, and it's a relief to pull his eyes from Shane, to look at her.

"I guess so," Shane says. "Come on, I'm not going to be the only one shirtless. Catch up."

"I will always win naked challenges, man," Brendon starts, and then April pulls off her shirt. Her bra is pale pink and sort of delicate looking, one of the beautiful fairy floss things that girls wear. He can see her nipples through the thin fabric, soft-focus circles of dark pink, and Brendon loses track of what he was saying, thinking.

"Nice," Shane says, low and scratchy, and oh jesus, Brendon agrees. Shane touches her side, just about her waist, a grazing gesture that she moves into; then they're kissing, making out, while he unhooks the back of her bra with a sort of multi-tasking dexterity that Brendon kind of envies, even though he's much better at that move now than in years gone by. Her back is smooth and pale gold, the curve of her waist curling in and then out again into the swell of her hips. Shane's hands move there next, urging her bra straps off her shoulders and then rubbing over the back of her hips, bare over the low line of her jeans.

Brendon feels kind of left out again. Just because it's Shane's room, it doesn't mean he gets to go first. "Hey," he says, when April's fingers move to Shane's fly and start working it open; "aren't you guys forgetting something?"

"Well, you need to hurry up," she says, laughing as Shane steps out of his jeans. He's wearing the sad-looking white boxers that Brendon accidentally stuck through the wash with a navy wifebeater one time; they've never looked the same since, but Shane refuses to get rid of them. "You're falling behind. Lose the shirt, and maybe the jeans."

-

It’s like a battle after that; neither of them say anything about it out loud, but once Brendon’s lost his shirt and pants and Shane’s lost his jeans, they end up pressed against her, front and back, trading kisses as she twists between them. It’s like a competition; who can make her respond, who can make her moan the loudest, kissing her neck and her shoulders and her mouth. She twists away whenever Brendon makes a serious attempt to get her jeans off, whenever one of them gets really into the kissing, and it’s pretty clear that she’s seriously enjoying the making out and the competition both. It’s also clear that she has an incredibly different idea of how threesomes work than they do.

(Brendon can remember the last time they shared a girl. He went first and Shane sat on Brendon's bedroom chair in his boxers, jerking off slowly with one hand and smoking up, and the whole room stunk of weed, practically hot-boxed. Brendon's eyes started stinging a little with smoke and sweat, and he finished fast and rolled over onto his back. Then Shane had come over to the bed for his turn and passed him the blunt, and Brendon lay there watching the ceiling and smoking, feeling the mattress rocking beside him.)

That’s not how it works with April. They’re both focusing on her and they’re not trying to touch each other, but it’s not like Brendon can just ignore the fact that Shane’s right there. Their hands keep overlapping on her body, her hips, her waist, her back, her breasts; at first it’s kind of weird, and Brendon jerks his away every time it happens, but the more worked up by the kissing he gets, the more determined to be the best, the less he notices, or cares.

He’s pretty sure he’s never been more desperate to get off in his life when he finally breaks away. “I’m going first, right? Can I?”

April laughs breathily, like what he’s said is really cute. “Hey, you can both go first," she says, and for one crazy second Brendon thinks she means like in porn, seriously, do girls even do that in real life?

Shane's faster, his eyes flickering from April to Brendon. "You mean, like," he says, tilting his head at him. "You want to see us?"

"Um," Brendon says, because he feels like an interjection is called for at this point. "You want to see us do what?"

"Kissing would be good," April says, the side of her mouth curling. It's more intimate than a smile. She steps carefully out of her jeans and sits down on the edge of the bed, folding her arms like she’s ready for a show. "You could do that."

Shane opens his mouth, his eyes cutting to Brendon again, like he's checking with him, or going to put a stop to it, like he's gauging what Brendon's thinking, what he's comfortable with. Brendon doesn't know what he thinks, actually, but he knows he really, really wants to get off tonight, soon, and that there's a pretty naked girl sitting on Shane's bed, and that he's drunk enough that it doesn't seem like a big deal. It's not like he’s never kissed a dude; it’s just that it’s always been a joke before. He figures that doing it to make a girl hot is an even better reason.

He gives Shane a warning glance, _go with it_ , and Shane raises his eyebrows the smallest fraction. Then he nods.

"Okay."

"Okay," Brendon echoes. "We can do that." Shane's standing several feet away. "You should come over here, man," Brendon says, jerking his head. "I need to be able to touch you."

"Or you could come over here," Shane points out, but he crosses the space between them anyway, until he's standing about a foot away, too close for casualness. His eyes are very level, and the jut of his chin says _what now?_ but he's definitely going with it. It makes Brendon wonder for a second; has Shane done it before, like this? Sometimes he forgets how much older Shane is. The first time they shared a girl had been the first time Brendon had shared a girl with anyone, unless you counted that time he got off in the shower with Audrey while Ryan and Jac were fooling around in the bedroom, which he doesn't, but he's pretty sure that wasn't Shane's first threesome.

He bites his lip, and Shane's eyes follow the motion. April’s eyes on them make his skin prickle with edginess in a way that's actually kind of hot. It's a similar sort of feeling to the one he gets just before a show, sometimes, energy coiling up tight and uncomfortable. He licks his lips reflexively, and reaches out to cup the side of Shane's neck.

Shane tilts his head, leaning forward a little, and Brendon slides his fingers into his hair, feeling the damp skin of his neck against his thumb, and watches Shane's eyes flicker. He waits until Shane's looking at him again, ready, and then he kisses him.

It's fucking weird, kissing a guy. It makes something lurch in his stomach and the back of his neck prickle. Shane’s lips are firmer than April's, thinner, and Brendon had been planning to close his eyes and pretend Shane was a girl he'd picked up at a club, or after a show, but as soon as he kisses him, he knows it would be useless to try.

It should be the same thing as kissing a girl - it's not like there's any intrinsic difference between teeth, lips, tongue, after all, they're the same basic pattern in both sexes - but it feels different, even though Shane doesn't have fangs or a split tongue, something that really would mix it up. Brendon's kissed guys before, jokingly, but this isn't the same; because it's Shane, maybe, or because they're naked, or because April's watching, and her presence blunts some of the strangeness and gives it a hot, dull edge that makes crossing this line kind of exhilarating at the same time as it freaks him out. Her presence makes it borderline okay, but also more serious.

Brendon closes his eyes and presses closer, and hears Shane inhale hard through his nose. He can feel Shane's flat chest move against his when they breathe, smooth skin and the soft grinding friction of hair, and the unfamiliar way they touch sends another spike of adrenaline twitching through him. Then slowly, like giving permission, Shane opens his mouth for him. He kisses back carefully, almost lazily, like Brendon can't pretty much feel his heart beating.

He kisses Shane just as cautiously, letting go of Shane's shoulder and sliding his hands down his back like he would with a girl, his fingertips skimming along the dip of Shane's spine, his ribs stippling under Brendon's palms. Shane's hips are narrow and in line with his torso, not flaring out at all, like the skinniest girl Brendon's ever made out with, and then some. Even his hipbones feel different, something in the curve of bone itself, but his skin is soft and human and familiar.

"That’s really nice," April says softly, and Brendon's eyes pop open.

Shane's face is still right up close, way too close, close enough that all Brendon can even see properly are his eyes, wide and startled. Somehow he'd forgotten April was even watching for a second, which is really stupid, since that was kind of the whole point.

He pulls back and swipes his hand over his mouth, humming and electric from Shane's stubble catching and rasping at the edges of his lips.

-

He gets to kiss April again after that, and it’s amazing; she’s fiercer than before, no longer teasing and taunting, but aggressive. She's rough with him, and he likes that. She bites his lip and he can feel her teeth when she kisses him, her fingernails in his shoulders. It’s totally different from kissing Shane, that slow careful unfolding into unknown territory. This is hot, and it’s going somewhere definite, somewhere he knows pretty well, hopefully pretty soon. Her breasts are firm and feel totally awesome against his chest, and when he brings his hand down and slides his thumb against her clit, fumbling, finding, she makes a sharp noise and twists her hips until he's not rubbing her as much as she's grinding against his knuckles.

Shane's watching them from the edge of the bed, his head tilted and his expression interested, and Brendon knows how to do this, too. It’s familiar ground. It’s a relief.

"That's really nice," April says again, and Brendon laughs. Hey, he'll take the credit if she wants to give it to him. He leans forward to kiss her and she gets a hand flat on his chest, pushing him onto his back, and gets a condom unwrapped before he's really caught his breath. She has it rolled on just as neatly, and wow, she’s pushy for such a short girl. Brendon likes pushy. He thinks she’s going to ride him, which he's down with, but then she's tugging him sideways and over her, and okay, he’s going to be on top? He can do that.

It's pretty much the best thing ever invented, the smooth slide and pressure of that first entrance, even through the rubber. He swears under his breath and April hisses through her teeth.

He gets the rest of the way in, and he's planning to take it slow - get her off first, even - but his hips pull back, and drive deep, almost of their own volition, like his body's taken over from his brain. And really, it's way too much, after the girl in the bathroom and the long slow teasing since Shane came back with the drinks. Brendon turns his head to the side and grits his teeth, trying to hold on, slow down.

His gaze snags on Shane, just sitting there, watching them. He's not even jerking off or anything. His eyes are wide and hazel, just a little green. Brendon blinks hard, and his hips stutter, again, again, and then he's coming before he can stop himself. Two, three great wrenching pulses, and he's done.

Shit.

She keeps moving under him, pushing her hips up, but he can feel himself going soft. He rolls off her, feeling obscurely like he lost that round, and glares up at Shane's boring white ceiling.

"Hey," April says, pushing herself up on her elbow and stroking his shoulder. "It's okay."

Saying things are okay during sex means things aren't okay, in Brendon's pretty extensive experience. He closes his eyes, and ignores her.

He keeps them shut for a while, until the mattress begins to ripple with movement and curiosity gets the better of him. Pretty much all he can see is the pale breadth of Shane's back and the dark of his bent head as he kisses a long line from April's mouth to her throat to her breasts, between her ribs, just below her navel. Her hands are pale against his hair, too, and his head moves lower. Shane's totally going down on her before Brendon's even got around to tying off the condom.

He’s good at giving head, or at least it seems like it. Brendon’s always been more into going down on girls on a quid pro quo basis, but Shane seems pretty into it, and April definitely is, from the sounds she makes and the way her back arches, her heel pressing into Shane's back. Shane even gets her off – at least Brendon thinks he does; maybe she’s faking, maybe Brendon’s just telling himself that to make himself feel better.

This bites.

"Condom," Shane says, lifting his head and jerking it in the direction of the nightstand. "Brendon, can you -"

"What am I, your sex butler monkey?" Brendon demands, and Shane rolls his eyes at him. Brendon's annoyed and kind of ashamed - it's not like it's the first time he's gotten off too fast, and normally he doesn't mind too much, unless he really likes the girl, but it's different with a friend watching and maybe judging - but cockblocking when he's already had his turn is low, so after another token protest he scrambles over and finds the box. "Here you go, asshole," he says, and tosses it.

Shane catches it one-handed, right out of the air, which is just unfair. "Thanks," he says, and Brendon thinks about sticking out his tongue at him, and only barely refrains. Shane grins like he knows what Brendon's thinking, grabs a condom and throws the box back; Brendon has to duck, and it hits the wall instead.

"Fuck you."

"Hey, you could have caught it," Shane shrugs, tearing at the foil, like that wasn't a totally unfair throw.

Brendon hadn't really meant to watch at all, because he's sulking, or at least he wasn't going to start watching until they were actually fucking, but somehow he finds himself watching Shane peel it open and roll it onto his dick, which is actually pretty big and okay, Brendon's seen a lot of dude's dicks - which sounds kind of bad in his head, but he shares a bus with a bunch of guys and techs for most of the year, and even before he started touring, it's not like he didn't check things out in the showers or at the urinals, just to, you know, sort of make sure everything was normal - but usually they're not hard, except in porn, and it's kind of different right up close and in person instead of on a TV or a laptop.

He watches while they actually fuck, too, because if he's started, he might as well keep going, and April is beautiful, especially when she's riding Shane and he can watch her breasts moving and hear them both. If this was porn, if he was a guy holding a camera, he'd be watching Shane's dick moving in and out, but he's totally not, because the first time he catches sight of it by accident he has to look away. His face suddenly feels crazy-hot. It looks weird, that's all, the way the condom makes it look like an alien thing, a toy; the wrong colour, maybe, like it doesn't belong attached to Shane's body.

Brendon starts to feel into it again, though. He might be able to manage another round. He can totally still come back from his earlier, ignominous defeat.

Shane's panting, trying to strain up to kiss her, but April's hands are square on his shoulders, keeping them pinned to the bed, which is totally kind of hot. Brendon watches her close her eyes and rock back and forth, and he's watching her when she comes, still watching her even when Shane makes a rough noise that's way too familiar.

-

"So, my dick is back in the game," Brendon says conversationally some few moments later, when Shane's breathing pretty much normally again and April's lying back on the pillow between them with an arm over her eyes.

Shane grunts, half-incredulous, half-amused, and April turns her head and chuckles a little. "Really."

"Oh, yeah," Brendon says, and wriggles across the space between them until it's pressing against her thigh. He bumps his hips against her and makes a whimpering, pleading noise, kind of like a sad puppy, totally exaggerated for pathetic effect.

"Huh, you're not kidding," she says, turning her body to face him, too.

"I would never lie about something as important as this," Brendon assures her. Shane makes that noise again.

"Mm," she says. "Give us a minute."

Brendon's already given them at least four or five minutes, or close enough, but that's probably reasonable. April closes her eyes, carding her fingers lazily through his hair, and he can see Shane, spooned up behind her, stroking down her side. Brendon wriggles closer, until her neck is within nuzzling distance, and they lie there for a little while, pressed together. Every now and then Shane's hand glances off her side and his fingertips brush Brendon's ribs or his shoulder.

It's actually pretty nice, and Brendon's content to stay like that up until he's not. "Mmm?" he mumbles inquiringly into her neck. "Mmm?"

"Jesus, Urie," Shane says, and Brendon says "Um, I was talking to April," and April makes a pleased little noise low in her throat, stretches, and then says "Okay, let's see what we can do about that."

-

What April can do is a lot, it turns out, and Brendon finally gets the blowjob he feels like he's been hanging out for all night. It's not like he's complaining, because he's also gotten a lot more than that tonight, but at heart he's a simple man with simple needs, and what he really needed was a blowjob, and now that he's getting it he feels vaguely beatific.

It's a good blowjob, too, not that bad blowjobs are really possible short of actual maiming, although when he'd said that out loud a while back Shane had smacked the back of his head and told him that rock stars with a hot and cold supply of running groupies didn't actually know what they were talking about, which had a) hurt, and b) was totally incorrect, because Brendon's pretty sure that _at least_ ninety per cent of their groupies are underage and off-limits, and the rest are either not his type, not into him, not into dudes, or vacuumed up by Ryan, and it turns out that tour buses with narrow bunks crammed with unwashed guys aren't the total chick magnets seventies and eighties rock movies try to make them out to be.

So it's totally what he needed, and he's lying on his back getting into it and enjoying her fingers gently touching his thighs, and his balls, and, okay, behind them, that feels great, he's totally into that, and she's rubbing soft circles there while she's blowing him, and that's awesome, and then one of her fingers starts pressing, and it feels weird, and awesome, but weird, and he totally shouldn't be into it.

"Hey, you okay?" she asks, pulling off for a second. "You tensed up."

"Um, totally," Brendon says, because weirdness aside, it's not a lie, and _blowjob,_ and wiggles his eyebrows encouragingly at her. "Really. Really really."

It only occurs to him after she's raised her own eyebrows and then gone back down on him that maybe she was worried he was going to blow early again, which he's not. He has stamina, and anyway, he's taken the edge off. He's pretty sure he wants to wallow in getting head for a while, and then maybe see if she wants to go again, for real, and this time he's going to make sure that it's ladies first. He's thinking about that, and enjoying himself, and ignoring the whole weirdness of _finger, finger where it shouldn't be_ because it's not like it's much of her finger and it does feel pretty great, and then she sort of twists it and it feels _awesome_. He makes a noise he can't really help.

She hums a little, and okay, that feels like another finger, but it feels awesome too, and dirty, and Brendon makes another helpless noise, and jesus fuck, he totally should have gotten a girl to do this for him before, but it's kind of a weird thing to ask for, and no one's offered.

It takes a while for him to really relax into it, and then it's ridiculous how great it is; the way the extra sensation makes the blowjob feel even better, more overwhelming. There's more to concentrate on, the way every time she goes a little deeper or twists her fingers he wants to jerk up into her mouth, or maybe back further onto her hand, like he's being cornered from both sides, and either way he's going to win. If being fingered is like this for girls, he suddenly feels even more shortchanged by the girl in the bathroom at the club, or maybe more jealous. Maybe he respects her more for taking what she wanted and leaving.

For a while he actually somehow manages to forget that Shane's there. Which is stupid, because he's spent most of the night watching Shane kissing April, or fucking her, or watching Shane watching him with her. Even kissing Shane, which is something that the guys can never find out about. But somehow Brendon gets into the blowjob and forgets, right up until the moment she twists her fingers again and he moans _way_ too loudly, torn between rocking forward into her mouth or shifting back for more, because he wants more, needs more, and it's like every time April makes it feel that awesome she pulls back a little, like she's teasing him, which is not cool. It's too much.

He turns his head away, panting, and Shane's still lying there, beside him. His head isn't that far away on the pillow, and he's raised himself up a little on his elbow, like he wants to see better. The look on his face is weirdly intense, the sort of look he gets when he's shooting something with his beanie pulled down low on his brow and his mouth serious for once.

He startles when he realizes Brendon's looking at him. It's kind of a shocking dislocated moment, Brendon looking at Shane and Shane looking at him. For a moment Brendon's panting too hard to put it together properly, and then it really hits him, Shane's been _watching_ him while he was writhing on his back getting off to fingers in his _ass_ , and it's not that he didn't know Shane was there, it's just that he almost forgot. He's still frozen when April curls her fingers again.

Brendon can't help the way his hips roll back towards them greedily, or the choked-off little noise he throttles down in his throat, but he doesn't look away, either. Maybe if he keeps staring at Shane, Shane won't notice anything?

Except that's pretty impossible, and Shane's eyelids flicker when Brendon moans, and Brendon seriously didn't know it was possible to be this ashamed and freaked out and still be this close to getting off. He closes his eyes and tries to think about the blowjob and not about how fucked up it is, breathing hard through his nose. There's a movement to his side and he's pretty sure Shane's getting up to go, but when he opens them Shane's leaning further forward, still watching. His eyes flicker down to meet Brendon's again, and Brendon raises himself up on his elbow a little to meet him, he's not totally sure why, and sort of blindly presses his mouth in the rough direction of Shane's.

He's so close it's hard for him to move his mouth properly, and it's more of a wet, frantic pressure than a real kiss, his lip catching on the rough of Shane's stubble and sliding across the slick of his teeth. Shane tilts his head like he's going to make it better, make it real. Brendon pulls away before he can, slumping back across the pillow when his orgasm hits.

The tiredness hits harder than the orgasm, sweeping over him in its wake. He shuts his eyes and breathes. It's only meant to be for a few seconds, while he gets his wind back, but it becomes more and more difficult to open them again. He feels totally fucked out. He can hear Shane and April talking, moving, small light sounds that turn lower and more intimate.

If they go at it again without him he's going to be really pissed off, he thinks.

-

The muttering wakes him up again, and for a moment he's pretty sure he only just closed his eyes. It's low and hushed, but insistent, and way too close, and when he can't ignore it anymore, he cracks open an eye. April's getting dressed on the other side of the room, outlined against the curtains. There's too much light filtering around the edges for it to still be evening. He can't see Shane.

Through one narrowed eye, he watches her pull her jeans over her hips, then bend down to find her shirt. Brendon watches the lazy stretch of her curved spine, the bones pressing pale through her smooth skin for a moment, translucent until she straightens up again.

"You good for cab fare?" Shane asks in the background, a low male burr that doesn't freak Brendon out as much as it maybe should. He can't keep his eyes open and tiredness is pulling him back underwater again. He doesn't catch what she says, but he hears Shane laugh, and the too-loud click of the bathroom door.

Brendon makes a protesting noise into the pillow, trying to claw the covers up higher. They're tucked in somewhere, and don't move. His neck is cold. "God, what fucking time is it?"

There's a cautious pause. In the bathroom, the water starts running, like distant white noise. Shane says softly "Pretty early. Go back to sleep."

Someone pulls the covers a little higher up around his shoulders. He does.

-

Brendon wakes up properly in Shane's bed, and immediately feels naked. Really, really fucking naked. The sheet is stuck to him in a few places. He feels like he should have a hangover but he doesn't, not really, although he wants to brush his teeth and he really wants a shower.

There's clothing strewn around the bedroom floor in various piles. He grabs a t-shirt that looks his, and holds it clumped in his hand in front of himself. It should shield him enough to get down the hall, if he’s quick. He quietly opens and closes Shane's bedroom door and ducks down the hallway into the blissful dark and quiet of his own room. When the door shuts safely behind him, he rests his forehead against the smooth painted wood, just for a second.

He showers in his own shower, changes into boxers and a t-shirt, and wanders out into the kitchen, still rubbing at his hair. Shane's sitting at the kitchen bench, drinking coffee, like a normal morning, or nearly-morning, or kind-of-still-morning if you squint at the clock on the wall and pretend that the small hand is still stuck somewhere between eleven and twelve. Shane makes the coffee when he gets up first, which is always, even though Brendon pretends to take turns. He talks a large game.

There’s a cup sitting on the bench by the coffee machine, still steaming, like Shane knew when Brendon was going to leave the sanctuary of his bedroom. Brendon picks it up and sits down next to Shane at the bench. Nothing happens; the gas main doesn’t explode, and the world doesn’t end.

“Hey,” Brendon says finally, when it becomes clear that Shane’s not going to say anything. He resents being the one who has to talk. It’s not his usual job. Someone’s slacking.

Shane looks up. His curls looks tangled, like they dried wet, and he looks tired. Otherwise, he just looks like Shane, that dude who Brendon shares a lease and a coffee machine with, a dude who smokes just enough weed and really likes his cameras. “Morning,”

"We don't have to talk about this, do we?" Brendon asks, stirring sweetener industriously into his coffee.

"Talk about what?" Shane glances sideways at him, his eyes opaque as sea-glass.

"Right."

The awkward silence falls again, and Brendon concentrates on sipping at his coffee. His iPod is sitting abandoned on the table, and as the empty space where conversation should be closes hard in upon him, he picks it up and flicks around for an old school app. He loses two rounds of Helicopter, then wins a third.

Shane moves around the kitchen, clearing stuff away, which is the only way Brendon knows he's feeling weird. When Shane feels over his head, he gets busy. Brendon can definitely sympathise, but somehow his own nervous energy never manifests itself as house-cleaning. He tucks his chin down and focuses on sniping the planes before the little assholes in the parachutes even have a chance to jump, and doesn't notice that Shane's circled around to stand behind him until his coffee cup disappears.

"I wasn't done with that, you freak.”

"Yeah, you were," Shane overrides him. "Half an inch of cold coffee is nobody's friend."

"Don't say that in front of it, you'll hurt its feelings," Brendon chides. "C'mon, give it back." He should probably twist his head around and meet Shane's eyes, quell him with a masterful stare, but somehow he can't bring himself to look away, even though he's missed the last three helicopters. On the screen, little men are landing all over the ground, and getting ready to fire on his tank. He flicks back and starts a new game.

“Your powerbar's nearly gone.”

Brendon shrugs. "So I'll charge it later." There's a pause, and then Shane puts the cup back quietly and moves away, back into the kitchen. Brendon feels him go, even though he's not loud about it, and he wasn't standing close enough to touch Brendon's back, quite. There was warmth and the sense of something massed palpably nearby, a sort of awareness along the back of his bare neck and across his shoulder blades, and then there wasn't.

Brendon shoots down three helicopters and barely manages to take out a rogue parachute guy before he gets close enough to the ground that the mounted gun can't hit him. He takes another sip of cold coffee, makes a little _mm_ noise like it's awesome and delicious, and stretches a little, admiring his own killer reflexes. "Powerbar. Sounds kind of like a gym food. I think it even is a gym food, actually."

He cuts his eyes across to the kitchen bench and Shane, just in time to catch him rolling his eyes on cue, and feels the same mild sense of satisfaction he gets every time a helicopter drops from the sky.

"You know what I mean," Shane says, shaking his head. There's a clink of china as he dumps the various dishes he's gathered up into the sink, and a rush of noise when he turns on the faucet.

Brendon's on a roll now. " _Power_ bar," he repeats, dipping his voice suggestively on the second syllable. "Power _bar_. You know, that doesn't sound like a gym food, it sounds like what the energizer bunny calls his dick."

"Oh, baby, baby, work that powerbar," Shane moans, before Brendon has time to. He sighs exaggeratedly. "Man, I knew you were going there." He's laughing a little, Brendon can tell. "How did I know you were going there?"

"You know me, duh," Brendon shrugs. Shane smiles crookedly at him, the _yeah, I do_ as clear as if he'd actually said it, and then they're quiet again.


End file.
